Posts tagged with 'Nanododo'

I met John Jarrold a while ago at a literature convention. He was holding one to one slots with hopeful writers and their manuscripts. I was one of those writers. My first impression on meeting him, the first literary agent I’d met, was that it was clear why he’s one of the best in the business – sharp minded, generous with his 27 years of experience and precise in his critique of my efforts and those of many others like me, striving for publication.
“It takes time,” he tells me. “Don’t rush it and don’t give up the day job.”

You’re well-read, you write all the time, and now you’ve written something! Congrats! Not only that, but you’ve shared what you’ve written with a beta reader, and gotten your feedback. You’ve said thank you and spent some time turning your reader’s feedback over in your mind.

So you want to become a writer? You’d better start writing. I don’t mean that you have to write a book right this instant, or even a short story. But you have to become used to writing, to translating your thoughts and feelings and observations into sentences that convey them to your satisfaction. And that’s not necessarily an easy thing to do. But it can be.

This week’s NaNoDodo tips will be five tips from yours truly, @Hodder_Editor. Let’s get started!

There are ten billion words of advice out there about how to write a book. I’ve boiled them all down into five bite-sized tidbits, the things I think are absolutely the most important for fiction writers to heed.

We’ve featured three of my favourite books about writing – today we’re going to look at some of yours! I asked Twitter to share their favourite books about the art and craft of writing. You all positively flooded both my personal Twitter account and the Hodderscape Twitter with a staggering list of suggestions. So I’ve arranged them in alphabetical order here, with a few of your comments.

The books we spotlighted yesterday and the day before are good tools for any kind of writing. Today, however, we’re going to focus on a classic specifically dedicated to fiction writing, (and fiction criticism), particularly novels: EM Forster’s classic Aspects of the Novel.

In 1918, a Cornell professor named William Strunk, Jr., composed and privately published a short manual about writing. Years later, EB White, known best as the author of Charlotte’s Web, who had studied under Strunk at Cornell, remembered the little writing guide and revised it for publication. The first edition of The Elements of Style – known to its friends as Strunk & White – published in 1959 and sold about two million copies in that year alone.

For NaNoDodo this week we’ll be introducing you to a few books on writing. The best education you can get on writing is, of course, to read. Read everything! But there are a few essential books on the craft of writing, and we’ll share our favourites all week. To kick things off, of course, we begin with the man himself, Stephen King.